


Can't Fight the Temptation

by anniebibananie



Category: Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: CEO!Cersei, Detective!Ned, Enemies to Lovers, F/M, Hate Sex, Modern Era
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-01
Updated: 2019-10-01
Packaged: 2020-11-09 08:28:16
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,456
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20850461
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anniebibananie/pseuds/anniebibananie
Summary: He stood at the edge of the bed after tossing her onto the mattress, her lips stained and hair mused around her. She looked like a glass of champagne, tall and bubbly but dangerous if you had too much. Something you could get drunk on.“All you Lannisters have the same problem,” he replied.She arched a brow. “What may that be?”“You talk too much.”She liked that answer. Her lips curved upward. “Then make me stop.”[Ned is a detective. Cersei is a CEO constantly accused of crimes. They fall into each other's orbit.]





	Can't Fight the Temptation

**Author's Note:**

> here's the third place milestone madness fic. i had such a good time writing this, i really hope you all enjoy <3

Ned, for all his ability to note facts and figures, to find the smallest details to crack a case, could not for the life of him remember how this started. 

He’d learned the rhythm, the pace to their… moments? Should he call them moments? Blipses from reality, more like, because he often felt like he’d blacked out for an hour with the only indication that it’d happened a Cersei-shaped hole. 

She always showed up at his, never at her place _ (What? Do you think I want the smell of you lingering? _ Cersei would ask with a raise of her brow, _ always _the raise of her brow). A few paces in past the front door, a quick clacking high-heeled pace and a jacket thrown to the chair in his living room. Her eyes never met his right away, like she was just surveying the place and not here to do what they always did. 

_ Always _, he hated to think that what they did had become something an always could be tacked onto, but he couldn’t get around the word.

“Crack any of my crimes?” she would ask in a jaunting tone. 

He crossed his arms. She leaned against something—the edge of a table or the arm of a chair. Her brow raised again, an invitation or a dare (Ned hadn’t figured it out, yet), but he would approach. Never all the way, this was a dance after all. 

“Come on, Eddie,” she would tease, maybe bringing a nail up to her mouth that was lined in maroon and smirking all the while. “Tell me how you’ll get me?” 

“Don’t call me that,” he told her. “Or do you want me to start calling you Cece?” 

She pouted. He laughed. 

A cat mouse game. He approached or she approached, but a collision was inevitable. They were destined to end up in the same spot — her back arched against the bed and his head tucked into the curve of her neck and the two playing at one another until they were sated enough to last until the next time. 

Today it was higher tension, having just come from court. 

“That was fun, wasn’t it?” Cersei asked wickedly, a laugh on the edge of the words, and they don’t make it far enough in for her coat to be thrown over the chair because he was already sweeping her up into his arms. 

Maybe sweeping was too sweet of a word, too romantic. They weren’t _ romantic _. Ned grabbed under her thighs, and she let herself be hoisted up and then interlocked her legs behind his back, kicking the high heels off to clank to the floor. 

“You’ll never get me,” she teased into his ear before biting down on the lobe, sweeping her tongue over the spot. 

“You’re here right now,” he grunted, walking the two of them to the bedroom. 

She laughed. “I sure am, Stark. Why am I? Tell my why I’m here, why don’t you?” 

He stood at the edge of the bed after tossing her onto the mattress, her lips stained and hair mused around her. She looked like a glass of champagne, tall and bubbly but dangerous if you had too much. Something you could get drunk on. 

“All you Lannisters have the same problem,” he replied. 

She arched a brow. “What may that be?” 

“You talk too much.” 

She liked that answer. Her lips curved upward. “Then make me stop.”

* * *

_Ned remembered being young. He remembered stilted family dinners—him and his sister and brothers—when his mother would sigh and say, _ The Lannisters are going to join us this evening, darlings. _ His father would groan but support whatever she'd said. _

_ He hated the Lannisters. He hated the way Tyrion was unnervingly quiet until he couldn’t hold it in anymore, boasting some fact or thought you could tell by the gleam in his eyes he knew would be smart. He hated Jaime and his haughty tone, how he’d fling his stupid hair around and talk to Lyanna like a child pulling pigtails on a playground. _

_ He hated Cersei most of all, probably. She was cold and beautiful and cold. She stared through him like ice, like he was _nothing. 

_ So maybe that was the real start of it, the way her eyes always seemed to see something about him _ he _ couldn’t even know. Maybe that was when he’d started to hate her. Maybe that was when he’d started not to hate her at all. _

* * *

“You do know how mind-numbingly dull you are, don’t you?” Cersei asked. 

Ned thought it was a comical sight, though, to see her saying it with her lacy bra strap halfway down her arm and her hair artfully disheveled, pencil skirt unzipped but not taken off as she leaned against the counter of his tiny apartment. 

“You frequently remind me,” he replied in an even voice. 

She rolled her eyes again. “Most men when I taunt them try to rise to the challenge._ Let’s see how dull you think this is_,” she mimicked in a smooth voice, a japing sort of quality dancing at the edges of her words and lips. Then her familiar smirk was back in place. “You never do.” 

“I think actions speak better than words,” he told her, taking a step back into her orbit. That’s what was dangerous about getting too close to Cersei—that unflinching magnetic pull. Ned imagined, though he had limited practical knowledge on drugs, that it was sort of like going on a bender. In the moment, in the high, you were unstoppable and never wanted it to end.

But afterward you were ruined for weeks and left recovering without a road map. Tired and confused and_ I swear I’ll never do this again._

Yet he still kept coming back. Yet, she still kept coming back. “I think…” he continued, hands smoothing over her hips and up to her sides under the chiffon of her top before lowering back again to push that skirt a few inches lower. She hissed through her teeth like a snake. “If you wanted most men you would be with most men.” 

Her eyes flashed, and Ned could not imagine what he looked like through those startling eyes—sometimes hot as a burning house, others as cold and detached as Winterfell during the coldest winter. 

Cersei jutted her face up, looking at him down her nose with a wry twist to her lips. _ Come and get me, _ it said. _ Burn down civilizations just to get a taste of me. _

In the oddest moments, Ned thought maybe he would. In the more common ones, he was sure he would turn her in without a second’s remorse when he could finally nail her down with a sentence for her crime’s (any of them, he would take any of them at this point. just to prove one…). 

Ned tugged the skirt the rest of the way down, not caring that it was probably worth more than he made in a week or that it would wrinkle the fabric. He tugged the skirt and dropped to his knees and stayed in her whiplash of an orbit a little bit longer. 

* * *

_"What a surprise to find little Eddard Stark here…” Cersei began. _

_ He hadn’t heard her approach, just the clacking of her heels and the smell of expensive perfume. She was just as beautiful as the last time he had seen her, probably somewhere near a decade ago when he’d left home. _

_ He’d seen her of course other ways—editorials in glossy magazines or in glimpses on the news. He always tried to look away. He always failed. _

_ “Became a detective, did we? The family isn’t disappointed in you turning away from business?” Cersei asked. She looked like the cat who’d caught the canary. “You always were so boringly, blindingly good.” _

_ “Most people don’t think that's an insult.” He stuffed his hands into his jeans, didn’t think about the fine sheen of her silk shirt tucked into finely tailored pants. Her fingernails were a bright red, like the color of fire and revenge and blood. Like guilt. _

_ “Most people are boring. And blind. Like you,” she continued, but while her lips were mischievous, while they were belittling, they also looked sort of… excited. Like something had finally jolted her awake. “See you in there, Stark.” _

* * *

Ned hated when she smoked in his bed, but he knew telling her that did nothing more than make her want to smoke another one right away. She looked so good doing it, too. The sheet wrapped around her torso, and the cigarette dangling between her fingers. It made him feel like they were in some kind of film noir, except she would never be some fresh-faced ingénue helping him on a case. 

He was in bed with the enemy, but when he looked at her he just… he couldn’t put his finger on it. Sometimes, they felt so startling the same. It felt like looking in a mirror, maybe the image flipped, but not _ different. _Perhaps easier to say a coin, two sides of the same thing, but you couldn’t see one with the other. They were back to back, touching but never able to fully see eye to eye. 

“What would you do?” Ned asked. He was sitting on the chair in the corner of the room with a glass of water, still shirtless but in boxers again. “If you ever actually got caught.” 

“I won’t,” Cersei said. They were practiced words. 

“Do you ever feel bad about anything you’ve done?” Ned asked instead, knowing pushing her would do nothing. 

She took a drag of the cigarette, blowing the smoke straight up into the air. It spiraled before evaporating, and Ned knew it would line this room and these sheets after she left. “Not for a single second,” she told him. 

“No?” he asked evenly, though he knew that would be the answer. He _ knew _her. 

“The world has done nothing for me,” she replied. “A good pedigree, sure, but the world is fucked, Stark. It’s a twisted place with shitty people all clamoring over themselves for an inch of power. I’m just honest about it. I don’t feel bad taking anything from people like that.” 

“There have to be some good people,” Ned said. He didn’t say _ I have to believe that or I will feel buried with the weight of the opposite. _

“Maybe. Somewhere,” she replied. Her back curved more, resting her forearms on her knees. The sheet slipped down to reveal the top scoop of her breast. “Good versus bad is so dull. I care about interesting.” She pushed her long, tangled hair over her shoulder and took the final puff of her cigarette before stamping it out in a forgotten coffee cup by his bed. “Do you think you’re good, Ned Stark?” 

He shrugged. 

“You’re here with me,” she answered for him. 

He didn’t know if that meant he wasn’t. He didn’t know if she was trying to say it made them as bad as the rest of them, or maybe it just meant it made him _ interesting. _That was why she kept coming back over and over again, despite everything saying she should have given up long ago. He hadn’t grown dull, yet. 

It was a fact. _ You’re here with me. _Ned felt like it meant more, like they were two people on the same ship not sure the destination, but the only option off was the icy waters. To be alone in that endless abyss, what a terrifying thought. 

* * *

_Beep beep. Ned turned, trying to find where he’d parked the stupid thing. His car lit up on the opposite side of the parking structure, and he made his way toward it. When he was closer, though, he saw… was that _ Cersei? _ In her own car? And she was… _

_ She was crying. The action looked foreign and awkward on her. Cersei was a sort of untouchable goddess, forged from marble and as beautiful as anything in any museum. She didn’t cry. She bit and she slapped and she won. She wasn’t… _

_ He went to the passenger door and slipped into her car before he could think more on it. _

_ “Save your fucking knight in shining armor bullshit,” she bit out, voice like a whip. “I don’t want it.” _

_ Her eyes were trained on the center of the steering wheel, unmoving. Her hands were shaking on her thighs, and Ned didn’t understand it. But also… maybe he did. Some things when pulled too taut, held too tightly, were bound to snap every once in a while. Cersei held everything around her with a white knuckle grip because no one else could hold it as well as she could. _

_ That had to get exhausting. _

_ “Come back to mine,” he told her. _

_ “I don’t need to cry in your fucking arms, Ned.” She turned toward him, eyes rimmed with red, and she looked like a natural disaster. _

_ He knew then, with a forceful sort of certainty, that Cersei could destroy him. That maybe he would enjoy that sort of reckoning. _

_ “Come back to mine. When have I ever cared about talking to you?” _

_ She laughed, just a small chuckle, and his lips twitched at the edges. He dipped forward and cupped her cheek, pulled her lips to his. There were still damp streaks on her cheeks when they kissed and yet somehow he felt like the wrecked thing. _

* * *

“This can’t last forever,” Cersei said, one hand on his chest, one on his thigh, as she rode him. 

Ned swallowed the words with a groan, biting into her lip until she hissed. 

* * *

_“What do you think you’re playing at?” Cersei asked as they walked into his apartment. Her mascara had run before in the car, but she had wiped it away. There was only the smallest smear of black near the corner of her eye. _

_ “I have no fucking idea.” _

_ Her lips twitched. “That’s the most truthful thing you’ve ever said to me.” _

_ “What’s the most truthful thing you’ve ever said to me?” he asked, unable to help it. Maybe that made him less interesting, and he knew Cersei cared little about people who bored her, but still she came back to him. _

_ “I hate you,” she said, but it was the oddest thing the way she said it. Like it didn’t mean that at all. _

* * *

It was winter, finally, and Ned hadn’t seen Cersei in months. Not in court, not at his apartment, not on magazine covers or internet profiles. Nothing. He wondered if he saw her now what she would look like. If somehow she would look different, or if it would be like walking into his apartment with her clacking heels again—a ritual, a prayer. 

The police station was bustling, and he walked the long way through all the desks to his office in the back corner. He walked in, closed the door behind him, paused when Cersei was sitting in the chair across his desk with her smooth legs crossed. 

“I’m here to confess,” she said with a tilt of her head. 

“What the hell are you doing here?” He began moving again, dropping his bag to the side of his desk and falling into his chair. He shook the computer mouse, trying to get the screen to come to life. It made a sad, whirring sound. 

“Confessing. That's what I said,” Cersei repeated through a smile. 

It wasn’t a real smile, though, and Ned had never realized before now that he might be one of the only people alive to have been given the privilege of a real Cersei Lannister smile. As sharp as a knife and as smooth as water. Something destructive and beautiful in equal measure. 

That's what Cersei was, really. Destructive and beautiful. 

“You’re not fucking confessing.” He shuffled the leftover files on his desk and leaned forward on his forearms, looking at her over the wooden desk. “I know you well enough to know that if you’re confessing to something it’s exactly what you want to be doing, where you want to be, and sorry but I won’t hear it. I won’t be a part of your game.” 

“Oh, you won’t, will you?” She leaned back, fingers interlocked on her lap. 

“No. Besides, I relinquished all ties to any of your cases.” 

That surprised her, genuine surprise. “You gave up?” 

“No.” He met her gaze and felt locked in place. “I got out. I told them I was getting too attached.” 

She hummed, tapped her fingers against her bottom lip, and when she finally looked away she looked down to her hands before letting her eyes rest to the open window. The sun streamed over her features—she could as easily be an angel as she could a siren. 

“What a shame,” she finally said. She grabbed her purse and stood up, smoothing her skirt out before turning toward the door. “What a disappointment.” 

_ Disappointment. _ Ned knew what that meant. _ Boring. Something to be forgotten. _

This was healthier, he tried to remind himself. This was what he wanted—to go back to being normal, dating nice girls, making sound decisions. You couldn’t let yourself be destroyed and then complain about having to put yourself together again, you _couldn’t_. 

The door shut quietly, so quietly in fact he nearly couldn’t tell if she had even been there at all. 

* * *

_Ned laid, the sheets now on the floor and Cersei sitting on the edge of the mattress as she reached for her shirt. His breath came in hurried movements, trying to get oxygen flowing inside of him again. _

_ “You could stay,” he said. _

_ She looked at him over her shoulder, blonde hair down her back and somehow still red lips, though the lipstick had dulled in the center of her mouth. “You’re too honest. You know that, right?” _

_ He nodded. _

_ “I don’t want to stay.” _

_ “You lie too much. You know that, right?” _

_ Her lips quirked up. “I’m good at it.” _

_ “I don’t think so.” _

_ “The jury does.” _

_ “Well…” He shook his head. “The jury is easily suggestible. You’re honest here. You don’t think anything you let slip might come back to bite you in the ass?” _

_ She paused, let the shirt drop back to the floor and rolled onto her stomach. Her chin rested on his shoulder. “No.” Her fingers walked up his chest before finding the rough spot of his heart. She tapped there three times. “More than honest, you’re honorable. It’s worse.” _

_ “You think all my good qualities are bad.” _

_ She shook her head. “Honorable will get you killed if you pick the wrong people to be honorable to. You picked me.” _

_ “You let yourself be picked.” _

_ She hummed, laid her face onto his chest, didn’t leave just yet. _

* * *

He knew it was going to be her, somehow, when he opened the door. She did not wait for an invitation before waltzing in. When she got to the living room, she turned toward him. 

“No one has ever ended something before I got the chance to end it.” 

Ned didn’t know what to say to that. 

“I can’t be your girlfriend,” she said, and he noticed now that she was not wearing lipstick today. Her lips were a pretty pink, a beautiful pink, all on their own. Plump and alluring. “I don’t want to go see _ movies _or be your date to fundraisers or—”

“Cersei. It happened.” He stepped closer to her, a few feet away but still in the danger zone. “It ended.” 

“_ I _didn’t get a say in that.” Her shoulders straightened. “You know they’ll never catch me for anything if you’re not heading the cases. Whoever they put on my cases after you won’t be able to touch me.” 

“I wasn’t able to touch you.” 

She took her bottom lip between her teeth, sized him up like her prey. She scoffed, shaking her head and crossing her arms. “You’re the dullest man.” 

“You’ve told me that before. Did you come just to insult me?” 

“Give me your phone.” She held out her palm between them, and Ned didn’t know where this was going but he handed it over, anyways. “Of _ course _you don’t have a password,” she muttered under her breath. “Here.” She handed it back. 

_ Cersei Lannister. _She’d put her contact in his phone. 

“This can’t last forever,” he said, repeating the same words she had said to him months ago. He said them evenly, slowly, giving them time to plant and grow around them. 

She smiled of certainty and longing and something else, something Ned would spend his whole life trying to figure out if he could, the poor bastard. “None of the best things do.”

**Author's Note:**

> find me on tumblr at: [anniebibananie](http://anniebibananie.tumblr.com/)


End file.
